The Exiles of the Jews in Antiquity: the History and Legacy of the Ancient Conflicts That Created the Jewish Diaspora

The story of the Ancient Israelites in Egypt is one of the most famous stories in the world, and one of the most contentious from a historical standpoint. Today, most people know about the relationship between the ancient Israelites and the Egyptians from the Old Testament book of Exodus, and the numerous feature films that often depict the dealings between the two peoples in contentious ways. The deadly plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, the arduous 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert, and the Ten Commandments all make the Exodus unforgettable, but they’ve also left generations of scholars wondering just how accurate the Scripture is, with some seeking to prove the historicity of the account and others trying to tie it to the Babylonian exile of the Israelites in the 7th century BCE.. The return of the Israelites to Israel is, of course, inextricably linked to the history of the Jewish people, their dispersal throughout the Mediterranean world, and their reestablishment of the modern state of Israel in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust. The small area around Jerusalem was originally known to the ancient Greeks as Ioudaioi, hence the name Judea. An Iron Age kingdom is said, in the Bible, to have existed as a successor to the United Kingdom of Israel, which, it is claimed, existed from approximately 1010-930 BCE. The split in the kingdom, according to the Bible, was the result of the refusal of the northern tribes to accept the son of Solomon, Rehoboam, as their king. The Bible claims that, initially, only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the House of David, but Benjamin also joined with the loyalists after a few years. Two kingdoms, Judah in the south and Israel in the north, co-existed uneasily, with frequent outbreaks of war between them in the following years. Judah was invaded by the Egyptian Pharaoh, Shishak, in the 5th year of Rehoboam’s reign, and Jerusalem was sacked. Rehoboam gave the Egyptians all of the nation’s treasure and became an Egyptian vassal.. In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed the kingdom of Israel, and after a siege of three years, the city of Samaria fell to the troops of Sargon II. As was a common practice in the ancient world, the victor uprooted the inhabitants and forced them into exile, scattering the refugees throughout Asia Minor and possibly Africa to destroy them as a cohesive group and prevent them from possibly revolting. That exile brought about the end of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. Only the much smaller and less important kingdom of Judah, nestled in the arid lands of the south, survived the campaign of the king of Assyria in 701 BCE, which the Bible attributed to the intervention of angels. Modern historians believe that the failure of an army as powerful as Sennacherib’s to finish the job was due to a plague or a disease spreading among the ranks and forcing them to withdraw.. However it happened, for a few more decades, the kingdom of Judah survived, at the southern tip of the ancient Promised Land, along the western shore of the Dead Sea. It was subjected first to the empire that had tried to destroy it, and then to the Neo-Babylonians. Finally, King Nebuchadnezzar II razed Jerusalem when Judah allied with Egypt and refused to pay tribute. The city fell in 586 BCE and its inhabitants were exiled to Babylon.. The Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE is arguably the most important event in Jewish history. First, it was the central battle in the First Jewish-Roman war. Second, the failure of the siege on the Jewish side resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, a disaster that would eventually prove both permanent and catastrophic, since it was never rebuilt. Third, it permanently altered the diaspora of Judaism in the Ancient World. And because it was indecisive in breaking the power of the Jewish revolt permanently, it was also inconclusive and led to further revolts that broke Judean identity completely.